1. A more hackish The Story of O is causing a stir. 50 Shades of Grey, once an obscure book that was developed on Twilight fan fiction sites, titillates female readers with its BDSM themes and its dark-triad harboring main character. Some are surprised by the submission instinct of female readers:
“What I found fascinating is that there are all these supermotivated, smart, educated women saying this was like the greatest thing they’ve ever read,” said Meg Lazarus, a 38-year-old former lawyer in Scarsdale, whose friends and acquaintances have been buzzing about the book. “I don’t get it. There’s a lot of violence, and this guy is abhorrent sometimes.”
Look at what they read, not at what they say.
2. Father absence predicts age at sexual maturity and reproductive timing in British men. This is only the abstract, and I can’t find the full research. But it seems interesting as it finds that boys whose fathers are absent before the age of 7 experience earlier sexual reproduction. Boys whose fathers go absent later – between the age of 11 and 16 – experience delayed puberty, the research finds.
3. Joanna Schneider writes about “rape tag” – which is a game like freeze tag in which the kids playing the game have to hump each other in order to unfreeze – and wonders what it indicates about our society. She doesn’t believe that the game indicates that “rape culture” is thriving. I agree, but I’d take it a little further. I believe that a game like “rape tag” is the result of a society which openly talks about rape and flippantly labels as rape things which aren’t rape. Take the discussion over whether or not the Texas and Virginia transvaginal ultrasound bills are rape. TV shows discuss rape; rape cases are played out in the media; kids are taught about what rape is and how to avoid it. The direct cause of kids playing a game like “rape tag” is the increased discussion and awareness-raising of rape. So perhaps kids playing “rape tag” means that kids are hearing about something like rape but haven’t quite put together exactly what it is and why it’s bad. It’s just like when young boys play war. Most hear about how horrible war is, but they just want to play.
4. The Go-Nowhere Generation.
5. Speaking of which – why have engagement rings become more normalized across the past couple of generations even while men have marginally dropped out of the labor force? You’d figure that both would move in concert, but perhaps the fact that these trendlines are diverging (and I make the assumption that the average amount spent on engagement rings has increased over time and continues to increase) indicates the widely-discussed bifurcation into the Haves and Have-nots. But if it is seen as a good thing for the men of society to get married – which forces them to invest in society – then why does the cost of even entertaining the notion of getting married continue to rise?
6. Straussian social conservatives.
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On the go-nowhere generation.
1. Fewer 18 y/o’s are white and non-whites like Hispanics and blacks are less mobile.
2. Credentialism makes moving harder. If a state university graduate moves to DC or NYC, they are competing with Ivy Leaguers for jobs and educational opprotunities.
3. The cost of college leaves students with enough debt that they cannot finance a move.
4. Most Americans live in large urban areas today. What is the benefit of someone who grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina or Nashville to move to Atlanta? this is also the reason that kids to not have drivers licenses. You need a car in rural Iowa or Wisconson but not in Chicago.
5. The birthrate for whites in rurual areas is so low that they are not many kids who needs to get off of the farm.
Superdestroyer has a good point. Young, middle class white Americans are still pretty adventurous, from what I can see. They never want to stay in one place long, it seems.
….. kids are taught about what rape is and how to avoid it.
No they aren’t.
But if it is seen as a good thing for the men of society ….
men of society?
Moving across the country when you have a somewhat comfortable living situation (but no extra cash to spend) means you’re gambling your comfortable existence on a pipe dream. Is it a good bet? Who knows. Maybe for some people, but not for others. I think things have to be really desperate for it to be a legitimate option, and while things aren’t good for most Americans, they’re not desperate either.
The “Go Nowhere” Op-Ed wasn’t bad but it missed a big reason people don’t move, the lack of a safety net.
We live in work environment where workers are expendable, poorly paid in many cases and one look someone doesn’t like means you are living under a bridge. Worse, you can easily end up in some database somewhere and find it very difficult to every get hired again. People can’t afford to take risks any more.
As for the Facebook point, well yeah true but the economy is going to have to find a way to move past industrial mass production models soon enough anyway. Its not as much a resource issue as much as a combination of changes in taste, people wanting less material as vs. E goods and drastic increase in efficiency.
Pretty soon we really won’t need many people for labor except for some service jobs (till the auto-doc comes online anyway) and for some very cheap (i.e poorly paid) labor. This bodes ill for any kind of consumption since no wages means no buying anything.
However this is not entirely a bad thing, a mature, more family focused US much less based on getting more stuff might well be a refreshing change. We’ll probably end up stagnate like Europe in a a generations or so but so be it, the world will have to live without Festung Amerika
The engagement ring paradox has been on my mind. I want to know how so many feminists can still climax just by showing a ring off to their other female friends after bitching about the patriarchy and independence for years. I’m at the right age where the most obnoxious feminists I went to college with are starting to hit the wall and sell out everything they believed in, but the mass movement of women earning more but still expecting the ring surprises me. Maybe it shouldn’t, but I try not to be too cynical. This just plasy right into the narrative that feminism isn’t about equality, just commanding more resources for women w/o the effort.